Vol. 75/No. 5      February 7, 2011

In 2005 then-governor Thomas Vilsack had issued an executive order restoring the right to vote to prisoners after they served their sentences.

Since the mid-1990s, more financial burdens have been heaped on working people convicted of felonies. Fines, penalties, court costs, and surcharges were increased during the terms of the two previous Democratic Party governors: Vilsack, now U.S. secretary of agriculture; and Chester Culver.

Some sheriffs and municipal jails charge as much as $65 a day for inmates’ prison stays. Defendants can also be charged for attorney fees and expenses of court-appointed lawyers. Most have to pay a $300 probation fee and charges for electronic monitoring. While these measures undermine the rights of all working people, Blacks are disproportionately hit. Making up about one-quarter of Iowa's prison population, they represent 2.8 percent of the state's overall population.

In Iowa, Blacks are imprisoned 13.6 times more than whites, the largest disparity in the country and more than double the national average.

Branstad’s aide said the order “simply reinstates the process that was previously in place under the Iowa Code and Constitution." Branstad was governor of Iowa for 16 years in the 1980s and ’90s.

The new law affects those who are imprisoned since Branstad took office, and will not affect an estimated 100,000 people whose voting rights were restored under the previous executive order.

At a news conference held by the Iowa-Nebraska State Conference of the NAACP the new law was compared to a "poll tax"—a tax during Jim Crow segregation used to prevent Blacks from exercising their right to vote if they couldn't afford to pay. The poll tax was ruled unconstitutional in 1964.
 
 
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